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Abdel Aziz Street: Classic Cairo Underdog TV Series

Published On:
18/08/2011

Straight from the off, this show holds no
punches. From episode one, a fast pace of events was set and there’s been no
looking back since. Audiences were immediately thrown into the world of the
main character; Abdel Aziz. Yes, just like the street.

Abdel Aziz hasn’t got much to shout about.
His father is a modest porter, and his mother a humble housewife. As a child,
‘Zizo’– as our hero is referred to – works small odd-jobs to bring in extra cash
to the house. He does so behind his father’s back, whose only wish is that his
son focuses on his school work so that he can eventually go to university and
make something of himself. Being the
scoundrel that he is, Zizo pays little attention to his father’s counsel and
instead lags behind as he drags his way through school.

In the meantime, he
falls for his neighbour Lobna, who in contrast, is a very astute student who
goes on to study pharmaceuticals at university. Love never comes easy, and this
love story’s foil comes in the form of the son of Gargawy – an influential figure in the area – who grows
up to be a strapping police officer.

Along with partner in crime Qandeel,
Gargawy pretty much terrorises the neighbourhood, and harvests his heavy-handed
influence to pillage the great Abdel-Aziz Street. Only one man can stand up to
them and save the street; yes you guessed it, it’s Zizo.

As with the majority of Egyptian Ramadan
series, there is an overwhelming amount of plotlines to follow in Abdel Aziz Street. But the drama is
enough to keep you wanting more. The series portrays Abdel Aziz Street as a
dog-eat-dog world, where merchants cheat to win, and no man would hesitate to
step over another to get to what he wants.

As we say, the series piles on the drama by
the bucket-full. This does sometimes translate in excessively long scenes that
are more suited to film than Ramadan television. It also has a reverse
effect on the flow of an episode, as the pace of events often cut short by a
blunt event or plot point that has to be drawn out in an elaborate and
theatrical scene.

This seems to be done at the expense of
deeper-seated explanations. For example, the history of the romance between
Zizo and his forbidden love is rarely explained, and at times comes across as a
little shallow.

Stylistically, the mise-en-scène is spot
on. The series does a great job of portraying Abdel Aziz Street, Attaba, and
the surrounding Downtown Cairo areas. This actually feeds a certain charm and realism into the characters and
their stories. It’s also worth noting Amr Saad’s turn as the lead; it has thus
far been an impressive performance.

This is a romance of the mushiest kind. It’s so sappy, it should be considered an honorary member of the Nicholas Sparks adaptations club. With that being said, it’s also thoroughly adorable and has two great leads with McAdams and Tatum.

Paige (McAdams) and Leo (Tatum), a very happily married couple, get into an awful car crash. While Leo makes a full recovery, Paige loses her memory of the last five years of her life; the period of time during which she quit law school, abandoned her image obsessed, preppy ways, cut off ties with her family, became an artist and met, fell in love with and married Leo.

She wakes up from her coma to a husband who she doesn’t remember and parents who are overjoyed that she’s forgotten about their dispute. While Paige’s parents try to bring her back to the way of life that she’d rebelled against, Leo tries to help her remember why she’d left all that behind in the first place. Fighting for a wife who doesn’t remember him and is a completely different person than the one he knew, Leo tries to get her to fall in love with him again.

The Vow has a surprise up its sleeve; Tatum’s acting skills finally make an appearance. His comedic turn in 21 Jump Street was a hilarious surprise but The Vow allows him to flex some more dramatic muscles. His character basically boils down to a Prince Charming type guy who believes in soul mates and happily ever after and he actually manages to pull it off.

Instead of simply playing Leo as a live action Disney prince, he injects his character with a heavy amount of sorrow, hurt and bewilderment. Leo is the film’s emotional core and Tatum’s performance is occasionally heartbreaking. McAdams, while as compelling as ever, offers a mishmash of her previous characters. As previously showcased in Midnight in Paris and The Notebook, she has perfected the art of making sympathetic characters out of stuck up snobs.

The film rarely gets unbearably cheesy, setting it apart from your run of the mill Sparks adaptation. It gets mushy, emotional and sappy, but it’s more likely to make you smile than roll your eyes. Leo’s pain and heartbreak combined with Paige’s family’s delight at having their daughter back, gives the film a level of grit that keeps it from becoming overly cloying. However, the secret of the film’s success is the leads, who have great chemistry and manage to pass off some of the cheesiness as bearable.

The Vow is just pure Hollywood in all the best ways. Cute messages written in blueberries, gorgeous bohemian style flats and artist studios, beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes, a happy ending in the snow, and so on. It takes a certain type of temperament to stomach something as unabashedly sentimental and cheesy as this, but, for the right audience, it’s catnip.

Titled from a popular term which describes the early transfer of a young offender from a juvenile detention facility to an adult penitentiary, Starred Up is by no means an easy watch. However, as much as it is difficult to digest at times, there is a certain poetic beauty behind its seemingly violent and destructive quality that makes it difficult to look away from.

Shot within the walls of an abandoned Belfast prison, the film opens with troubled nineteen-year-old Eric Love (O’Connell) undergoing an embarrassing admittance process, involving a complete body strip down, as he’s transferred into an adult reformatory.

Immediately marked as a “single cell, high risk” type detainee, it doesn’t take long for Eric – whose frequent and violent outbursts got him relocated there in the first place – to stir up trouble and make enemies both with fellow inmates and security guards.

After a mistaken attack on another inmate lands the young delinquent into the disciplinary hands of the law, Eric is soon approached – and rescued – by the in-house therapist, Oliver Braumer (Friend), who believes that he can help the young man rehabilitate.

Unfortunately, getting to the root of Eric’s problems - and getting him to open up - is no easy task and Oliver - together with the other rehabilitating convicts - often find themselves the targets of both verbal and physical abuse. To top it off, Eric has to find a way to learn to share the walls of his new confinements with his estranged father, Nev (Mendelsohn), who is currently serving a life-sentence in the same prison.

Penned by first-time screenwriter Jonathan Asser – a former prison psychotherapist whose own experience with the British penal-system adds a hefty dose of authenticity and realism to the film – Starred Up, told through a series of wordless and violent expositions, is fuelled with gripping intensity which is hard to shake off. Relying on action, rather than words, the uniqueness – and the heart - of the story lies with the father-son narrative, whose bonding difficulties are depicted through the oppressiveness of life in prison.

Contributing to the movie’s relentless and uncompromising approach to despair and violence, O’Connell – mostly known for his role in the British TV-series Skins and recently seen as the lead in Angelina Jolie’s war-drama Unbroken – is an absolute standout; feral and unpredictable, his performance carries the film, while Mendelsohn is equally superb as a man whose persona and motives are seemingly hard to read.

Powerful, emotional but never too sentimental, Starred Up is a true British-prison drama classic whose quietly yielding power and passion for storytelling will leave you feeling captivated and moved.

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Abdel Aziz Street airs on Dream at 6PM. Episodes are repeated at 9PM, and 10AM the next morning. The series is also being shown on Dream2, Al Mehwar, Al Mostakbal, ONTV, Arabia Drama, Oscar Drama and Amwag.